New Steinway hammers... was Collodium etc

[Mark Bolsius]

Hi List,

I've been following the collodion/lacquer/hardening thread for a bit with
great interest.

Firstly, I thought I'd share what's happening at S&S Hamburg, I was there
for 6 weeks in May/June this year.

They are still using Renner hammers made specifically for them. In the
factory, at the pre-voicing end of things:
-they level strings,
-tune,
-listen,
-shape,
-match tops to strings,
-listen,
-needle,
-lacquer (varying ratios depending on the result required of nitro-cellulose
lacquer and thinners).

The C&A techs and the retail techs use lacquer or collodium/ether depending
on their personal preferences and the tonal result required. While I was
doing the Concert Tech Academy, George Ammann, the senior concert tech and
our instructor, prefered lacquer but in extremely thin solutions 20:1 or
more. His logic was that several applications working up to the desired
result was better than trying to work backwards from too much...I agreed
wholeheartedly!

I'm not a great fan of using artificial means to prop up tone/power. I
prefer to work with a hammer that has too much and bring it under control.
The result is far more natural in it's tone colour and balance.

Which brings me to a question I'd like to hear some points of view on-

Why is it so hard to produce hammers that are hard enough? Or why don't
hammer makers do it, there are plenty of examples of good hard hammers, they
just take time to work with.

Is that the problem, we don't have the time, so we try to make hammers that
are close to what we want and that don't need copious amounts of needling?

I know that Renner and Steinway (Hamburg) are continually adjusting the
formula...too soft...too hard...too soft... to find the right balance.
Treading a fine line...

I suppose it's a result of the economic approach when you have workers being
paid by piece work, they complain if they have to work too hard to achieve
the right result and the factory or the piano buyer complains if the hammers
are too soft to produce good tone/power, but the workers like it when there
is little needling to be done.

I find the American approach of starting with a hammer that is too soft and
doping it up hard to understand...different culture I suppose?


Cheers
Mark Bolsius
Bolsius Piano Services
Canberra Australia

Tuner to Canberra School of Music
Australian National University